Welcome

The Virtual Commons is an open software initiative hosted at
Arizona State University.
We develop real-time dynamic experiments to analyze and better understand collective action issues. For
example, sharing common resources has been a challenge for human societies for millennia. In many
circumstances, the ability to create effective institutional arrangements has helped to avoid the tragedy of the commons.
Controlled experiments are
an important instrument for increasing our understanding of how people organize themselves in cooperative
arrangements.

Participate in ASU research

If you are at least 18 years old and an undergraduate student currently enrolled at ASU you can
sign up to the participant database that we use for randomly
selecting participants.

Typical experiments involve making decisions on a computer or on paper or answering survey questions.
Experiments take about an hour to complete and may be conducted online or at the
Elinor Ostrom Multi-Methods Laboratory
in Cowden Hall, Room 124. Your participation in these
experiments is entirely voluntary. For participating in these studies, you will typically receive $5 for
showing up, and an additional amount which can vary between $5 to $40 depending on your decisions during the
experiment.

You can sign up for experiments by logging in via ASU's CAS authentication, signing
in with your ASURITE ID, and then filling out a brief questionnaire. When experiment sessions are available,
randomly selected groups of individuals in our participant database will receive email invitations informing them of
the upcoming sessions and with additional instructions on how to sign up and participate in a specific experiment
session.

If you have any other questions, please see our FAQ or feel free
to contact us. Thanks for your interest!